In honor of May as Jewish America Heritage Month, the Cherry Hill library held a paint and sip event on the evening of May 6 in collaboration with the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) of Southern New Jersey and the Jewish Federation of Southern New Jersey.
Susan Dermer is on the board of the JCRC.
“We just have women that are gathering together to celebrate Jewish Heritage month,” she explained, “and the whole focus is strength and resilience of Jewish women.”
Attendees were given a plastic zipper storage bag with a picture frame, pallet, two brushes, a cup, a sponge, a disposable apron and a piece of paper. The project consisted of painting two wooden symbols important to Judaism, the tree of life and the hamsa, a symbol of the ancient Middle East.
Examples of the finished hamsa and tree of life symbol artworks at the paint and sip library event on May 6.
The tree of life means growth, wisdom and the connection between generations of Jewish women together.
“The deep roots passed down through generations together are to honor the legacy of a strong Jewish woman: grounded, resilient and always moving forward,” Dermer noted.
The hamsa – an open hand with five fingers and an eye in its center – represents protection and feminine strength.
Stacey Rosenblum was in attendance at the library event.
“It’s meaningful, because I’ve actually had hamsa keychains and things from Israel, from other places, and I lost my hamsa,” she said. “Now I get to paint one.”
The wooden symbols were in the back of the room at the library on a table that held the bottles of paint. Participants were instructed to paint the hamsa first, to ensure it had time to dry. The paper included in the bag could be painted as a background for the tree or the hamsa.
As the participants painted and enjoyed light refreshments, Moriah Benjoseph Nassau, director of leadership development and learning for the Jewish Federation, gave a talk on influential and important American Jewish women in history. She began with the Old Testament and Torah figures like Esther, Miriam and Ruth.
Nassau then went on to discuss poet Emma Lazarus, who wrote “The New Colossus,” the poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty; Zionist leader Henrietta Szold; feminist Bella Azbug, a lawyer and later congresswoman from New York; Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the first Jewish woman on the Supreme Court; and musician Debbie Friedman.
Nassau also mentioned the first four women to become rabbis for each of the major movements of Judaism. And she addressed the Laurel Thatcher Ulrich quote – “Well-behaved women rarely make history” – and its true meaning.
“What most people mean when they say it today is, you should stand up and make a lot of noise, because otherwise it doesn’t get put in history books …” Nassau pointed out. “She (Thatcher) means nearly the complete opposite. Well-behaved women rarely make history, and that is okay.
“We don’t need to be in the history books to make a difference.”
After the presentation, the library group was instructed on how to put the project together, placing the dried and painted wooden figure onto the glass of the picture frame, then putting a paper border around it, with the paper background on top of both, then putting the back of the frame back on.
“It was an important, amazing, fun event,” said another attendee, Chevy Cianci. “I learned about some important Jewish women I didn’t know about, which is pretty cool.”
